New Visual Language
F o r m
F o l l o w s
F u n c t i o n
n io
t c
n u F s
w lo
m r o F
lo F
n
e
g a u ng
tio a rm
La l a u
Ne
is wV
n
fo n I e
Ma
zi a g
rk o ct W
to
roje P ty
a
si
r e v i n
s nife
M nal
o
s Per
Co
nte
nts
Pa ge
U
M o d e r n i s m
Modernism was a massive creative movement that swept across the western world revolutionizing the way artists and designers looked at the world, after the industrial revolution changed the western world as we knew it people started to notice that certain tasks designs of buildings, tools and vehicles were becoming unsuitable for the new world. As such as change was needed people started to become selfconscious and because of this they started to experiment with things that they had not looked at before such as the specific form of objects and the process and materials that were used in the creation of paintings, poems and buildings. Realism soon became a thing that most modernists were not interested in and they made use of previous methods such as reprise, incorporation, rewriting and several others.
The use of modernist methods and outcomes has changed drastically since the digital revolution changed the way we see and create different pieces of work such as the way lino printing was one of the only ways to create a sort of negative colour image and the way letterpress styles of work can be created by using a computer instead of a designer having to create a whole new press layout to print a poster, there are a huge amount of other examples of processes that used to take a huge amount of time to create for certain Graphic artworks but they have all been drastically reduced in the time it takes to do so thanks to the digital age which has made a massive advancement in the way things in our everyday lives are created such as, the process of designing a simple layout for a front cover of a magazine can
be created in several minutes changed and completely evolve into something that will be used as inspiration for years to come and this is mainly because the time that it takes to do this has been shortened but only the design process has been revolutionized the actual printing part has made advancements over the years but it still takes time to create certain embossed effects that are created by letterpresses and the unique effect that lino printing gives you at the end but each of these has been changed by the technological growth over the years and I think even though people might feel that there is not as much satisfaction in creating it on a computer compared to what there is when you press the letters against the paper on a letter press.
Josef MüllerBrockmann Josef Müller-Brockmann was Swiss graphic designer who was born May 9 1914, he studied architecture, design and history of art while at university and in 1936 he opened his own graphic design studio in Zurich specialising in graphic design, exhibition design and photography. From then he followed his graphic design all the way and in 1951 he produced concert posters for the Tonhalle in Zurich, and then in 1958 he became a founding editor of New Graphic Design alsong side R.P Lohse, C. Vivarelli and H. Neuburg. In 1966 he was appointed European design consultant to IBM, He is recognised by his simple designs and his very clean use of typography, shapes and colours which inspire many of us graphic designers in the 21st century.
Brockmann has several books about design and visual communication: The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems (Gestaltungsprobleme des Grafikers), Teufen, 1961 A History of Visual Communication (Geschichte der visuellen Kommunikation), Niederteufen, 1971 History of the Poster (Geschichte des Plakates), coauthor Shizuko Yoshikawa, Zurich, 1971 Grid Systems in Graphic Design (Rastersysteme für die visuelle Gestaltung), Niederteufen, 1981 Graphic Design in IBM: Typography, Photography, Illustration, Paris, 1988
Fotoplakate: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, co-author Karl Wobmann, Aarau, 1989 Mein Leben: Spielerischer Ernst und ernsthaftes Spiel (autobiography), Baden, 1994 One of the main books that I have used to help me so far or even inspired me and influenced the way I create my work is Grid Systems in Graphic Design, I think this is his best book out of the ones that I have looked at so far and I think it has had the greatest effect on me since it made me realise what sort of layouts work and which don’t and it has helped me see what should and should not go in certain places.
Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffman was a Austrian architect and designer or consumer goods, he was born in Brtnice, Moravia. He was one of the founders of the Vienna Secession which was a collection of Austrian painters, sculpters and architects, the other founders of this secession was Joseph Maria Olbrich, Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser, after about 15 years of being with them he decided to leave after some conflicting ideas with realists naturalists over differences in artistic vision and disagreements over what art really is and what is or can be called art. He then went to create the Wiener Werkstätte which he designed many products for them which includes chairs, lamps and sets of glasses which has all reached the Museum of Modern Art. Hoffmann’s style eventually
became more sober and abstract and it was limited increasingly to functional structures and domestic products. In 1906 he designed and built his first great work on the outskirts of Vienna, the Sanatorium Purkersdorf. Compared the his first architectural design the Sanatorium Purkersdorf this was a great advancement towards abstraction and a move away from traditional Arts and Craft and historicism. This project served as a major precedent and inspiration for the modern architecture that would develop in the first half of the 20th century, for instance the early work of Le Corbusier. It had a clarity, simplicity, and logic that foretold of a Neue Sachlichkeit. The critical Hoffmann’s
reception of oeuvre has
faithfully mirrored the changing tastes and ideologies in the history of 20th-century architecture. He received favourable attention from the critics early in his career; in 1901 The Studio brought him to the attention of the Englishspeaking world through an illustrated article written by Fernand Khnopff. He was also given extensive coverage in the special volume The Art Revival in Austria that was published by The Studio in 1906. In France, Art et decoration published favourable reviews of his early and his mature work.
Wim Crouwel
Willem Hendrik Crouwel, was born on the 21st of November and is a Dutch graphic designer, type designer and typographer. In 1963 he became on the of the founders of the design studio, Total Design (its current name is Total Identity). He has designed products from catalogues to posters for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, he also designed the typeface, New Alphabet, it was a design that embraced the limitations of the technology of that time which was used by early display monitors at the time which could only display horizontal and vertical strokes. Other typefaces that he has designed are Fodor and Gridnik. He also designed several stamps which were widely used by the Dutch Postal Service in the Netherlands which were used from 1976 - 2002 when they was removed from production.
In the years Crouwel worked for Total Design, he designed many geometric wordmarks, one of which is the wordmark for the Dutch Rabobank, designed in 1973. The lettershapes have been influenced by the fact that the wordmark had to be used as a 3D light box. After the 3D application was finalised, the 2D design for print was adapted. According to Wim Crouwel, New Alphabet was never really meant to be used and was overthe-top and was really made just to show what can be done even know it is very difficult to read. But it made a comeback in 1988 when designer Brett Wickens used a version of the font on the sleeve of Substance by Joy Division. He was given a wide range of different awards for his
contribution to graphic design over the years: 1958 and 1966 – De H.N. Werkmanprijs 1965 – The Frans Duwaerprijs 1991 – The Piet Zwart Prize 1991 – The Anton-StankowskiPreis 2004 – The BKVB Funds Oeuvre Award 2009 – The Gerrit Noordzij Prize
Massimo Vignelli
Vignelli worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. His clients at Vignelli Associates included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale’s and American Airlines. His former employee Michael Bierut wrote that “it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition. To get to the office, I rode in a subway with Vignelli-designed signage, shared the sidewalk with people holding Vignellidesigned Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, walked by St. Peter’s Church with its Vignellidesigned pipe organ visible through the window. At Vignelli Associates, at 23 years old, I felt I was at the center of the universe.” Vignelli participated in the Stock
Exchange of Visions project in 2007, as well as publishing the book, Vignelli: From A to Z, containing a series of essays describing the principles and concepts behind “all good design”. It is alphabetically organized by topic, roughly approximating a similar course he taught at Harvard’s School of Design and Architecture. Vignelli’s designs were famous for following a minimal aesthetic and a narrow range of typefaces that Vignelli considered to be perfect in their genre, including Bodoni, Helvetica, Garamond No. 3 and Century Expanded. He wrote that, “In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.”
In January 2009, Vignelli released The Vignelli Canon as a free e-book; an expanded version was printed in September 2010, but the original remains available for download on the Vignelli Associates website. In the introduction Vignelli wrote, “I thought that it might be useful to pass some of my professional knowledge around, with the hope of improving [young designers’] design skills. Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best.” I have put Vignelli in my book because I think his contribution to the graphic community with his subway map that he created for the New York Subway which has paved the way and changed how maps are designed and used around the world.
Serge Chermayeff
Serge Ivan Chermayeff was born 8 October 1900 he was a Russian born, British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects. The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea He was born into a rich Jewish family in Grozny, Russian Empire (currently Chechen Republic), but moved to England at an early age where he received his education. In 1928, he became a British citizen.[6] He first started working as an interior designer for a firm in London. By 1930, he and the German architect Erich Mendelsohn briefly partnered to form their own architectural firm. They created some very important works in the British modernist movement, notably the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill,
East Sussex, Cohen House, London, and Shann House in Rugby, Warwickshire. He was also responsible for Gilbey House, an office and factory complex in Camden for gin distillers Gilbey’s. These are all now Listed Buildings, being designated Grade I (De La Warr), Grade II* (Cohen House and Shann House) and Grade II (Gilbey House) respectively. They were members of the MARS Group. During the 1930s, Chermayeff designed a number of bakelite radio cabinets for the British company EKCO. In 1940, Chermayeff emigrated to the United States where he joined Clarence W. W. Mayhew as associate architect, helping Mayhew design his own residence. Chermayeff taught in 1940 and 1941 at the California School of Fine Arts.
In 1946, he was recommended by Walter Gropius to become the director of the Institute of Design in Chicago. He stepped down in 1951 when the institute merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology. Between 1952 and 1970 he would continue to teach at several universities including Harvard, Yale, and MIT. He retired in 1970. I wanted to include Serge Chermayeff in my magazine because of his and his partners massive contribution to the graphic design world that they helped create the look at, between them they created logos for the Armani Exchange, Pan Am, Mobil Oil, PBS, Chase Bank, Barneys New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Xerox, Smithsonian Institution, NBC, Cornell University, National Geographic, State Farm Insurance. This is why I think he should be here.
Po s t M o de r n i s m Post Modernism was a movement that started in the late 20th century which obviously because of the reign of Modernism people wanted to move on from the skeptical interpretations of culture, art and architecture. This is around the time the digital era was first coming around and when the term modern started to be used with more modern designs coming around which were basically focused on perfect shapes so from what I noticed is how modern “designs” normally incorporate the use of squares, circles and hexagons which have been generalized as modern shapes especially the use of hexagons in several designs from magazines to posters using their interlocking shape textures and I think this mainly came around because people was getting tired of seeing abstract experiments on form and wanted something
a bit more streamline and advanced for the new technological era that we was entering. Post Modernism firstly really affected the architectural design of buildings since the failed attempt at creating a Utopian perfection and the whole nuclear family idea and designers started to focus on creating something that had a form that followed its function so creating spaces that were designed for a certain purpose and focusing on that purpose to create a specific end product. Post Modernists were the first “Graphic Designers” well at a beginning stage at least they started to crate pieces of work which had no rational order or organization and started to incorporate the latest trends into their work such as; retro, 6 and beach yet it did not all have one unified style it started to branch out to create their own unique
and individual styles which were adjusted and changed depending on the purpose that the end product would be used as. It was mainly used as a time for Graphic Designers to go against the system as much as possible with their designs and create their own new way of designing things, a few influential Graphic Designers were April Greiman, Wolfgang Weingart and Tibor Kalman who had a role in shaping the way Graphics evolved when the term was first being used and helped define what it has turned into today.
David Carson
David Carson (born September 8, 1954) is an American graphic designer, art director and surfer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called “grunge typography” era.
later worked for a variety of new clients, including AT&T Corporation, British Airways, Kodak, Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony, Suzuki, Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV Global, Princo, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan, quiksilver, Intel, MercedesBenz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails. He, along with Tina Meyers, designed the “crowfiti” typeface used in the film The Crow: City of Angels.
In 1995, Carson left Ray Gun to found his own studio, David Carson Design, in New York City. He started to attract major clients from all over the United States. During the next three years (1995–1998), Carson was doing work for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike, Microsoft, Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss Jeans, and
He named and designed the first issue of the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. David designed the first issue and the first three covers, after which his assistant Christa Skinner art directed and designed the magazine until its demise. Carson’s cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the “top 40 magazine covers of all time” by the American
Society of Magazine Editors. In 2000, Carson closed his New York City studio and followed his children to Charleston, South Carolina, where their mother had relocated them. I think that it his contribution to the graphic design industry which is why I put him in my magazine I think how he went from just being employed by a graphic design company to design a magazine and then how he went on to start his own company create his own business and then create a whole new life from designing a range of different logos, magazines and posters which are used and shown all over the world, I think just the fact that his main office is in New York city just shows that he has got so far in life and he is one of the most well known designers of our time.
Neville Brody
Neville Brody (born 23 April 1957 in London) is an English graphic designer, typographer and art director. Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987– 1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode. He created the company Research Studios in 1994 and is a founding member of Fontworks. He is the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art. Neville Brody still also continues to work as a graphic designer and together with business partner Fwa Richards launched his own design practice, Research Studios, in London in
1994. Since then studios have been opened in Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. The company is best known for its ability to create new visual languages for a variety of applications ranging from publishing to film. It also creates innovative packaging and website design for clients such as Kenzo, corporate identity for clients such as Homechoice, and onscreen graphics for clients such as Paramount Studios, makers of the Mission Impossible films. Recent projects include the redesign of the BBC in September 2011, The Times in November 2006 with the creation of a new font Times Modern. The typeface shares many visual similarities with Mercury designed by Jonathan Hoefler. It is the first new font at the newspaper since it introduced Times New Roman in 1932.
He was one of the founding members of FontShop http:// www.fontshop.com in London and designed a number of notable typefaces for them. He was also partly responsible for instigating the FUSE project an influential fusion between a magazine, graphics design and typeface design. Each pack includes a publication with articles relating to typography and surrounding subjects, four brand new fonts that are unique and revolutionary in some shape or form and four posters designed by the type designer usually using little more than their included font. In 1990 he also founded the FontFont typeface library together with Erik Spiekermann. I think Neville is one of my favourite graphic designers because of his typography design and that is why he is in this magazine.
Tibor Kalman
Tibor Kalman (July 6, 1949 – May 2, 1999) was an American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colours magazine. Kalman was born in Budapest and became a U.S. resident in 1956, after he and his family fled Hungary to escape the Soviet invasion, settling in Poughkeepsie, New York. He later attended NYU, dropping out after one year of Journalism classes. In the 1970s Kalman worked at a small New York City bookstore that eventually became Barnes & Noble. He later became the supervisor of their in-house design department. In 1979 Kalman, Carol Bokuniewicz, and Liz Trovato started the design firm M & Co., which did corporate work for such diverse clients as the Limited Corporation, the new wave group Talking
Heads, and Restaurant Florent in New York City’s Meatpacking District. Kalman also worked as creative director of Interview magazine in the early 1990s. Kalman became founding editor-in-chief of the Benettonsponsored Colours magazine in 1990. In 1993, Kalman closed M & Co. and moved to Rome, to work exclusively on the magazine. Billed as ‘a magazine about the rest of the world’, Colours focused on multiculturalism and global awareness. This perspective was communicated through bold graphic design, typography, and juxtaposition of photographs and doctored images, including a series in which highly recognizable figures such as the Pope and Queen Elizabeth were depicted as racial minorities. Kalman remained the main creative force behind Colours, until
the onset of non-Hodgkins lymphoma forced him to leave in 1995, and return to New York. I think another reason why I like the sound of Tibor Kalman so much is because of how he started with nothing and then in the end has a business which is still going today in New York City and everyone who worked for him and with him now have their own graphic design industries inside the city as well it just shows how much of a major component he is to the graphic design industry that has evolved inside New York and how he has helped other change and develop it and even get their own businesses going as some of his colleague s have done because of him and this is why I want to include Tibor in my magazine since he is such an influence on the graphic design industry.
Jamie Reid
Jamie Reid (born 1947) is an English artist and anarchist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, came close to defining the image of punk rock, particularly in the UK. His best known works include the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and the singles “Anarchy in the UK”, “God Save The Queen” (based on a Cecil Beaton photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, with an added safety pin through her nose and swastikas in her eyes, described by Sean O’Hagan of The Observer as “the single most iconic image of the punk era”), “Pretty Vacant” and “Holidays in the Sun”. He was educated at John Ruskin Grammar School in Croydon. With Malcolm
McLaren, he took part in a sitin at Croydon Art School. Reid produced a series of screen prints in 1997, the twentieth anniversary of the birth of punk rock. Ten years later on the thirtieth anniversary of the release of God “Save the Queen,” Reid produced a new print entitled “Never Trust a Punk,” based on his original design which was exhibited at London Art Fair in the Islington area of the city “ “. Reid has also produced artwork for the world music fusion band Afro Celt Sound System. Jamie Reid created the ransomnote look used with the Sex Pistols graphics while he was designing Suburban Press, a radical political magazine he ran for five years. His exhibitions include Peace is Tough at The Arches in
Glasgow, and at the Microzine Gallery in Liverpool, where he now lives. Since 2004, Reid has been exhibiting and publishing prints with the Aquarium Gallery, where a career retrospective, May Day, May Day, was held in May 2007. He now exhibits and publishes work at Steve Lowe’s new project space the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop in Clerkenwell, London. Jamie Reid was one of the designers that I was more than happy to put in my magazine, Jamie Reid was one of the first designers that I was introduced to via the sex pistols and their album cover designs that my father had collected and I think it was their intreresting and unique and new design that got me really interested in what he was thinking and how he went about it and I really wanted to why and how he came up with a design like that.
April Greiman
April Greiman (born 22 March 1948) is a designer. “Recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool, Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with establishing the ‘New Wave’ design style in the US during the late 70s and early 80s.” Greiman heads Los Angeles-based design consultancy Made in Space. Greiman first studied graphic design in her undergraduate education at the Kansas City Art Institute, from 1966– 1970. She then went on to study at the Allgemeine Künstgewerberschule Basel, now known as the Basel School of Design (Schule für Gestaltung Basel) in Basel, Switzerland (1970–1971). As a student of Armin Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart, she was influenced by the International Style and
by Weingart’s introduction to the style later known as New Wave, an aesthetic less reliant on Modernist heritage. Greiman moved to Los Angeles in 1976, where she established the multi-disciplinary approach that extends into her current practice, Made in Space. During the 1970s, she rejected the belief among many contemporary designers that computers and digitalization would compromise the International Style; instead, she exploited pixelation and other digitization “errors” as integral parts of digital art, a position she has held throughout her career. In 1982, Greiman became head of the design department at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1984, she lobbied successfully to change the department name to Visual
Communications, as she felt the term “graphic design” would prove too limiting to future designers. In that year, she also became a student herself and investigated in greater depth the effects of technology on her own work. She then returned to full-time practice and acquired her first Macintosh computer. She would later take the Grand Prize in Mac World’s First Macintosh Masters in Art Competition. I think April Greiman is a wonderful graphic designer who actually paved the way for all graphic designers today since she was the first one who decided to take the next technological step in our industry.
Low Polygon
For this part of my magazine which would normally have a mind map of my work I decided instead of that I would rather have something like this were I go over something that inspired me in my magazine and then the other page is a mood board containing images that inspired me. On this page I am going to go over what Low Polygon is, where it came from and then why I chose it as my front cover theme and parts of my theme for my magazine... Low poly is a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics that has a relatively small number of polygons. Low poly meshes occur in real-time applications (e.g. games) and contrast with high poly meshes in animated movies and special effects of the same era. The term low poly is used in both a technical
and a descriptive senses. One of the reasons that I decided to include Low Polygon in my magazine is because I recently discovered it and tried to incorporate it into my previous project Earth Artifact, I used it quite a bit and I developed quite a interest for it and I wanted to do more but since I reached the end of the project I couldn’t really carry on because of the time constraint that I am in. I did start to do some in my spare time by learning how to create different versions of Low Polygon art on different programs like Cinema 4D, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and I started to look at creating some of them on paper to see what they would look like but I preferred the ones that were created digitally.
I really wanted to work with the style again so I decided to try and incorporate it into my magazine since it can be made into a minimalistic art along as I kept the colours and the shapes simple, I also wanted to experiment with some other Ways of creating the Low Polygon outcome for different types of this style and I do really like it and I really am looking forward to developing these methods further and turning this into on of my specialities that I want to follow and bring with me in the Graphic Design Industry, Another thing that I really like about it is how simple it is and I think that is key because minimalism was one of the themes that I decided I wanted to base my magazine off.
Minimalism
Minimalism was one of the themes that I had really favoured even before I started thinking about creating a magazine in this style but I thought that all these magazines that are full of colours and all this text and all the different shapes under the sun into their magazine and making it a really crazy and I think this is what has put me off that style and made me favour Minimalism even more. What is Minimalism? In the visual arts and music, minimalism is a style that uses pared-down design elements. Minimalism in the arts began in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris,
Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of Modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Post-minimal art practices. Minimalism in music features repetition and iteration such as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. The term “minimalist” often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. I think that the basic shapes
that help create minimalism are really good and give it all a clean and professional look, I think it is just the style that is in fashion now, and I that is kind of why I favour it but also the fact that every magazine that is coming out these days do not look professional in my eyes and they do not have that clean sleek look, some of them do like Time and Empire but most of the others that are all about “Gossip” do not and fair enough the design represents what it is about but I think everything should be designed around a certain idea and look professional in the end. This is why I have chosen Time and Empire as my two inspirations because I think their design shows what they are about.
Mood
Board
Empire Magazine Review I have chosen the “Empire” magazine as one of my inspirations for this magazine and this is why it is in here, I thought it would be important to place the few that inspired me in the design process of my magazine. One of the reasons I decided to use Empire as one of my two main inspirations is because I love how simple some of their magazines are that they have designed, some of them are quite busy and I do not like that but the majority of them are simple and plain and they have a constant pattern throughout with their red empire masthead at the top and then the different coloured borders that they have adapted to their identity and this is what is now normally associated with this design. I wanted to create something simple which didn’t have a lot
of complex colours and crazy shapes all over the cover like I have seen on some other magazines that I have looked at, I wanted something simple that used a range of three colours and then done what they have done with a simple border which I think helps give the image more impact with the brighter colours being brought out by the darker background. The only thing that I did not like about the Empire magazine cover was the fact that the title was always at the top of the magazine and after a while and I decided to move my title down to the middle of the page since I thought it looked better in the middle after several development attempts at the cover. I tried to sway away from the use of too much text on my cover and I only decided
in the end to use one basic subheading on my cover which is for the magazine subject which is “Form Follows Function” and Empire do the same or use a similar effect on their magazines for their front covers. I thought the use of white for my text was interesting at first because I always like text that looks like it fits with the cover image and I think the fact that it is white which creates the illusion that it is being cut out of the background image which I think is a cool effect considering the background image looks 3D thanks to all the different shades of colours that are in the background.
Time Magazine Review Time is one of the other magazines that I thought it would be important to include in my magazine since they also inspired me in my design and helped me create an image in my head of what I wanted to create.
recognise and then instantly know what the magazine is as soon as they look at it just by the aspects and layout of the cover itself before reading any of the text which is something that I would aim for and I did aim for in my magazine.
The first thing that drew me to choose “Time” as one of my inspirational magazines is the border around the cover, I noticed after a while of looking around at different magazines “Time” was the only one to have a border and I kind of liked the fact that the border was part of “Time”’s identity since it kind of adopted the border as its own and no other magazine has used it like this which I also liked because if I was going to create a magazine that was going to go on the shelves like “Time” or “Empire” I would want it to have it owns specific properties that people could
Another reason why I chose “Time” for my second choice is because they have a really simplistic even minimalistic layout and design and they keep it consistent throughout every issue of their magazine and I think this is why “Time” is one of the easiest magazines to recognise just by the layout and colours they have used since they started the magazine. Their text at the top in their specific font that they have adopted to their own magazine is also nice since they have picked a font which suits what magazine stereotype that they
are going for since there are a lot of magazines out there today some are more professional than others depending on what sort of audience that they are aiming the magazine to be for but I think that “Time” have done this very well and it leaves it open to everyone there isn’t anyone I don’t think that wouldn’t be intrigued by the simple and basic design of this magazine. The final thing I really like about this magazine is the use of their subheadings on the cover is very unique they manage to use different fonts and colours that contrast of the image each time but these colours never draw the attention away from heading at the top of the page, also they do not use a whole load of text for the subheadings they just give each one a basic heading and move on which is another thing I really like.
Empire Masthead Review I really like the masthead that “Empire” have for their magazine because it is simple and very basic which I think is a really good thing because if the font on their magazine was too busy it would conflict with the image in the background and their subheadings on the page and the masthead wouldn’t allow them as much room to be seen and draw the attention away from them and bring it to the masthead and I think the masthead should be a tiny bit stronger than the subheadings so it gets the attention of the target audience first and then the subheadings should be just before it to make sure they read it in the correct order that it was meant to be read in. I think the use of the colour red is a very good choice of colours to use since it stands out against a wide range of different colours and because
of this I have noticed that they are very particular when it comes down to picking the background for their magazine since they are taking the photos their-selves and they are for the one specific magazine they are able to get the images in certain colours that specifiably contrast against the red masthead at the top kind of like how white text contrasts against a black background which allows them to use the red all the time which is quite nice. Another thing since they are quite well known in the movie business for reviewing new upcoming films they are able to cover up their masthead with an image of a character from the film which covers most of the masthead and makes it difficult to recognise but because they are well known and the colours they have used are the same you can easily recognise which
magazine the cover belongs too straight away. The closest font that I could find that I could compare to this font is EF Kaffeesatz Schwarz which isn’t the exact font that they use but I think it is close enough that I can compare them both, they also use the same font for the main parts of their headings and subheadings that are on the front cover also which I think keeps it consistent throughout the cover which is good and also I think they would have to be careful with using the same font throughout the magazine cover because it could start to conflict with the masthead if the subheadings were to big kind of like how the “Inception” subheading conflicts with the masthead a bit but that is on purpose to show what the magazine is mainly about and what the main article is.
Time Masthead Review I also like the way the “Time” masthead looks because it is simple and effective with the serif flicks on the edge of the letters help give it a more modern look compared to some of the more urban mastheads that are used in some magazines today. I think the masthead that they have used and the type is good because it helps it fit into the category that the magazine was made to go in I think anyway. I think the use if the colour red on the masthead is quite an interesting choice just as the use of red in the “Empire”’s magazine, they both use the same sort of colour because red is one colours that can contrast with a wider range of colours maybe even as many colours as white or black but it does stand out against a whole lot of colours and this gives them a wider option of what sort of
background image to choose when they are designing their magazine covers and also opens up a theme for them to use and follow which they have done throughout their magazine. Also since they are quite wellknown like “Empire” they also have the chance to pick what sort of images are taken for the background so they can have a specific idea on what the cover is going to look like before the image is even taken so then when the photo is taken into the editing stage they can change the background to what ever colour they need to help make the masthead and subheadings stand out the most for what ever colour scheme they want to use on their cover as part of one issue. Since they have the option to choose their own background
and what colour it is they are able to keep the red type colour and become well known it in the process and with this in combination with the red border they have adopted these into their own personal corporate identity, people know which magazine is the “Time” magazine because of the red border and the pure red text. They have also placed the masthead at the top of the magazine cover, which I think is a good idea for the sort of magazine that they are about so they can have a big main image in the middle of the page unlike ours which is a graphic design magazine which is more about layouts, images and typography other than spreading the information about certain things that are happening in the real world.
City In Flux Brief Synopsis “City in Flux” Promoting research, creative thinking, experimentation, semiotics and visual narrative “The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvellous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as Though in an atmosphere of the marvellous; but we do not notice it.” Charles Baudelaire Background: “Major cities are in a continuous state of flux caused by building and rebuilding activities and flows Of artifacts, goods, commodities, and people, which dissolve and recreate different areas as sites Of activity and use. Cities are characterized by tensions between this destruction and Reconstruction of spaces, the coexistence of heterogeneous groups, and the different claims upon
Spaces, which they advance, and contest. The fusion between the physical form of the city and its Social composition promises to help us understand how the question of the city’s identity and Differences can become a topic of interest for the groups of persons who inhabit its spaces and Who calculate ways and means of practically dealing with these changes.” Extract from Culture of Cities Project The ‘City in flux’ can take many forms in its simplest and most literal form ‘City in flux’ is little more Than the layout of the town and the associated directional signage. However, when we apply a More cultural interpretation, then the ‘City in flux ’is more than this alone. It is an integral,
multi-sensory Landscape that is realised when many factors inter-relate. The way in which the space is Interpreted and perceived. This was the information that we was given at the start of the project, from this we had to come up with an idea on how to represent it with an option of several different outcomes which shown a “City In Flux”, I decided to follow the route of a series of posters and promote some of the historic buildings that are in my home town of Rochdale, I also decided to create them in a Art Deco style since that is what we was learning about at the time and I had also based part of my essay on this subject as well so I thought it would be a good idea to learn more about it at the same time.
Art Deco Rochdale
Memorial
Roch
l Gardens
hdale
Earth
Artifact
Earth Artifact Brief Synopsis Project synopsis “Earth Artifact” Promoting research, creative thinking, experimentation, semiotics, media channels and visual narrative. “For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk, we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas enabling people to work together ... to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking ... and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future with the technology at our disposal - the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to
do is make sure we keep talking”. Stephen Hawking Background The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records, which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them. The Voyager spacecraft’s are not heading towards any particular star, but Voyager 1 will be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the Ophiuchus constellation in about 40,000 years.
This was the second project in the year that we was given to do and it was based off a satellite that was launched in 1977 which carried two golden records with information on Earth and its people with the hope of contacting other civilizations that could possibly inhabit our galaxy with us. I started to look at some sort of origami ball which unfolds and shows different information as it unfolds but then I found that I had to scrap that idea and come up with something else so I decided to look up something similar to an origami style and I came up with a Low Polygon idea which then turned into a holographic projector which could be sent into space and then shows the information as a hologram and cycles through information about Earth.
Typography Brief Synopsis For my inspiration I first wanted to look for something modern or futuristic at first but there was nothing in the lesson at that time which resembled anything related to what I wanted to create so I decided to use the internet to look at some sort of image and see what sort of typography has already been created and see what sort of idea that I could come up with. At first I wanted to create some sort of metal sheet typography and have some military symbols on it kind of like a font based off Top Gun or something but then I decided I wanted to go with the modern side of things and started to look at some digital type and I found some sort of neon typography which I did kind of like the look of for a while which I thought was quite interesting so I thought I would give it a go and see what it looked like.
For my third and final type I wanted to create some sort of digital font something similar to the one that is on a digital clock or something but clump it all together and then use diagonal lines to split it up to make it look like rhombus’s and it did look unique and different so I thought I would go with it for my final design. Task 1 Animation, Architecture, Art, Graphic Design transcription Using the references provided or your own, transcribe shapes to make letter forms and or Typographic characters. Lowercase or upper case, using the letters anesg. You should generate at least three different options. From the image samples provided or your own references. Please use A3 layout or graph paper
Task 2 From your initial shapes and letterforms, draw up three rough alphabets. Finally selecting the most appropriate option to design for task 3. Task 3 Draw up final alphabet and recap previous tasks, Animation, Architecture, Art, Graphic Design transcription Using the reference provided. transcribe shapes to make letterforms and or typographic Characters. Lower-case or upper case,using the characters anesg. You should generate at least three different options from the image samples provided. Select most appropriate design from your three roughs and draw up the complete Alphabet using graph paper.
Personal Manifesto
- General research into possible outcomes - Generate basic ideas on what sort of outcome I want (Animation, Posters etc) - Map out ideas on mind map - General research into several ideas - Research into artists that do similar work - Pick one main idea or merge a few together - Research further into main idea - Start to generate possible experimentations - Develop several final experimentations - Gather more research on art-
ists who do similar work/styles
done in time.
- Try en-corporate their work into mine what does it look like good/bad
I like my work to look as professional as possible so I try to follow in the footsteps of companies and designers that have worked in the past and follow how they have made their work professional, I think the aesthetic look at the end is the key thing and as long as it sends the message across that it was made to do I am happy with it.
- Begin to work on a final outcome and what format it will be - Develop Final piece Present Final piece and research document. When it comes down to idea generation and coming up with an end product I have always been told that I think outside the box and come up with ideas that would be near impossible to complete with the time frame that I have, even though it seems impossible I still like to strive for it once I’ve got the basic idea in my head it is hard to change so I normally try to follow it through to the end, it has always been close but I have always managed to get it
I normally try to plan out how I am going to work but because of my out of the box ideas I normally struggle planning out an exact time management system because of certain things that I cannot change eg, the render times on my latest project which ended up taking up to days of my time just to get the render settings perfect and it rendering correctly in the right definition.